This thesis explores the history of botany as a global collection-based science by tracing parallels between utopian traditions and botanical collecting, from their sixteenth-century beginnings to the present. A range of botanical collections, such as gardens, herbaria and classification systems, have played a central role in the struggle to discover a global or universal scientific order for the chaotic, diverse and locally shaped kingdom of plants. These collections and utopia intersect historically, and are characterised by the same epistemology of collecting: the creation of order through confined collecting spaces or “no-place.” They are manipulations of space and time. Between chaos and order, both seek to make a whole from – often unruly – parts.   The long history of botanical collecting is characterised by a degree of continuity of practice that is unusual in the sciences.  For instance, the basic technology of the herbarium – preserving plants by mounting and labelling dried specimens on paper – has been in use for almost five centuries, from sixteenth-century Italy to ongoing digitisation projects. The format of the compilation thesis is well-suited to handling the historiographical challenge of tracing continuity and discontinuity with such a long chronological scope.   The thesis is structured as a walled quadripartite garden, with the Kappa enclosing four research papers and an epilogue. The papers take a diachronic approach to explore different perspectives on botanical collections: botanical collecting in seventeenth-century Oxford, pressed plants in books that are not formally collections; and the digitisation of botanical collections. These accounts are all shaped by the world of books, text and publication, historically a male-dominated sphere. In order to acknowledge marginalisation of other groups and other ways of knowing plants, the epilogue is an explanation of an embroidered patchwork of plant-dyed fabric, which forms the cover of the thesis. / Denna avhandling behandlar historien om botanik som en global samlingsbaserad vetenskap genom att följa paralleller mellan utopiska traditioner och botaniskt samlande från dess början på femtonhundratalet till idag. Olika sorters botaniska samlingar, till exempel trädgårdar, herbarier och klassifikationssystem, har historiskt spelat en central roll i sökandet efter en global eller universell vetenskaplig ordning i växtrikets lokalt rotade och till synes kaotiska mångfald. Det finns historiska kopplingar mellan dessa botaniska samlingar och utopi, som båda även präglas av vad man kan kalla samlandets epistemologi: skapandet av ordning genom avgränsade samlingsutrymmen eller ”icke-platser”. De är manipulationer av tid och rum.   Det botaniska samlandets långa historia utmärks av en praktisk kontinuitet som är ovanlig inom naturvetenskapen. Herbariets grundläggande teknik att bevara växter genom att pressa, identifiera och montera dem på pappersark har varit i bruk i nästan fem sekel. Avhandlingen utnyttjar sammanläggningsformatet för att hantera den historiografiska utmaning det innebär att studera en så lång tidsperiod, genom att de ingående artiklarna behandlar skilda tidsepoker och disciplinära perspektiv samtidigt som de alla delar avhandlingens centrala tematik: ordnande genom avgränsade samlingsutrymmen.     Avhandlingens struktur är baserad på den muromgärdade fyrdelade trädgården, med kappan som inneslutande fyra artiklar och en epilog. Artiklarna är diakrona analyser av botaniska samlingar: om samlande i Oxford på sextonhundratalet, om pressade växter i böcker som inte formellt utgör del av samlingar, och om digitaliseringen av botaniska samlingar. Dessa sammanhang är alla formade i en värld av böcker, text och publicering – en värld som historiskt har dominerats av män. Epilogen belyser den marginalisering av andra grupper och deras kunskaper om växter som detta har inneburit, genom att förklara avhandlingens omslag, ett lapptäcksbroderi av växtfärgade tyger. / <p>QC 20171115</p> / Saving Nature: Conservation Technologies from the Biblical Ark to the Digital Archive

Cette thèse propose d'explorer les textes que Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) a consacré à un projet de connaissance des rythmes, une « rythmanalyse », terme qu'il emprunte à Gaston Bachelard, pour contribuer à ce que nous appelons une poétique urbaine. Henri Lefebvre a laissé une œuvre fondatrice dans les études urbaines contemporaines en théorisant l'avènement de la société urbaine moderne et en produisant une théorie critique de l'urbanisme et des espaces et des temps sociaux qui en résultent. Nous montrons que la théorie critique est solidaire d'une poétique issue du romantisme révolutionnaire de l'auteur, qu'il développe au contact de pratiques artistiques, notamment celles de l'Internationale Situationniste. À l'encontre de ce qu'il analyse comme le processus d'abstraction de l'espace et du temps urbain, la rythmanalyse fait partie de la quête d'un espace-temps approprié à même de métamorphoser la société urbaine et de restituer le corps total, afin que l'urbain devienne l’œuvre de l'homme. Lefebvre ne propose pas seulement une méthodologie qualitative d'observation des rythmes, mais une expérimentation rythmanalytique, dont nous pouvons imaginer la pratique sous la forme de l'utopie expérimentale. La rythmanalyse fournit ainsi les idées directrices d'une poétique appliquée, à même de créer des formes, des textures et des styles pour l'habiter urbain. Cette poétique urbaine, à la fois création et connaissance, procède par des pratiques expérimentales et restitue le jeu rythmique qui enrichit l'expérience esthétique de l'espace et du temps urbain. / This thesis proposes to explore the texts that Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) devoted to his project of understanding rhythms, his « rhythmanalysis », a term borrowed from Gaston Bachelard, to contribute to what we call an urban poetics. Henri Lefebvre has produced fundamental work in contemporary urban studies in both his theorization of the advent of modern urban society, and his elaboration of a critical theory of urban planning with its resultant social spaces and temporalities. We show that this critical theory unfolds in line with his construction of a poetics, which is inspired by the revolutionary romanticism that the author developed through his contact with artistic practices, especially those of the Situationnist International. Against his analysis of abstraction as an inherent process of urban space and time, his rhythmanalysis contributes to the creation of an appropriate space-time, with its ability to transform urban society and reconfigure the Total body so that what is urban can be instead considered a work of art. Lefebvre provides not only a qualitative methodology for the observation of rhythms, but also the outline of a rhythmanalytic experimentation, which can be associated with the practices of an experimental utopia. Rhythmanalysis offers guidelines for an applied poetics; it goes as far as creating forms, textures and styles for urban living. This urban poetics, simultaneously a creative act and one steeped in knowledge, proceeds through experimentation and restores the rhythmic game that enriches our aesthetic experience of urban space and time.

Le point de départ des travaux entrepris est la définition lefortienne de la démocratie par opposition au totalitarisme. Le totalitarisme est l’institution d’une société organique, une et homogène, dans laquelle aucune division sociale, aucun désaccord avec l’idéologie véhiculée par le parti ne sont possibles. La spécificité de la démocratie, a contrario, est de s’enrichir de la désintrication du pouvoir, du droit, et du savoir. Les citoyens, dotés de droits fondamentaux, sont juges de la légitimité du pouvoir établi. Leurs désaccords ainsi que l’antagonisme entre les classes sociales nourrissent l’exercice d’un commun litigieux. De là, une question fondamentale : une telle définition de la démocratie est-elle historiquement datée, ou continue-t-elle d’être pertinente aujourd’hui ? Doit-on encore concevoir la démocratie, pour la rendre authentique, par le conflit civil érigé en principe politique, ou faut-il l’envisager de manière consensualiste au lendemain de son opposition avec le totalitarisme ? Claude Lefort s’inspirait de Machiavel pour dépasser les limites du marxisme et repenser la démocratie par la valorisation du conflit civil, indissociable de la figure de l’imaginaire social. La thèse ici soutenue adopte différemment une perspective néo-machiavélienne. Elle revient à proposer un espace public dissensuel à partir du modèle machiavélien de l’entente dans le conflit, par confrontation avec l’espace public habermassien et d’autres conceptions du tort et du conflit dans les démocraties contemporaines. Comment concevoir aujourd’hui les figures du conflit civil et de l’imaginaire social, en s’inspirant paradoxalement de Machiavel pour interroger la démocratie ? / The starting point of the present work is the Lefortian definition of democracy as opposed to totalitarism. Totalitarism is the institution of an organic society, one and homogeneous, where no social division, no disagreement with the party’s ideology are possible. On the contrary democracy’s specificity consists in enriching itself with the disentanglement of power, law and knowledge. Citizens, endowed with fundamental rights can judge of the legitimacy of the power in place. Their disagreements as well as the antagonism between social classes fuel the dispute about common good.Hence a fundamental question: is such a definition of democracy historically dated or is it still relevant today? To make it authentic should democracy be seen through civil conflict made into a political principle or should it be viewed in a consensualist way just after its opposition to totalitarism? Claude Lefort drew from Machiavelli to go beyond the limits of Marxism and rethink democracy by giving more importance to civil conflict as an integral part of the theme of social imaginary. The present dissertation adopts in a different way a neo-Machiavellian perspective. It amounts to proposing a dissensual public space on the Machiavellian model of understanding within conflict by confronting it with the Habermassian public space and with other conceptions of wrong and conflict in contemporary democracies.Today how can the themes of civil conflict and social imaginary be viewed – paradoxically drawing from Machiavelli- to question democracy?

Although the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish is eclectic and uncustomary, it offers an important critique of contemporary scientific methods, especially mechanism and experimentalism. As presented in Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and Blazing World, Cavendish's natural philosophy incorporates rationalistic and subjective elements, urging contemporary natural philosophers to recognize that pure objectivity is unattainable through any method of inquiry and that reason is essential in making sense and use of scientific observation. In addition to its scientific implications, Cavendish's three-tiered model of matter presents interesting sociopolitical associations. Through her own use of metaphor and her theoretical fusion of matter and motion, Cavendish confronts the masculinist metaphors and implications of mechanism. Through the dramatization of her model of matter in the narrative Blazing World, Cavendish exposes the theoretical failings of contemporary methods and legitimizes her alternative to pure experimentalism. By envisioning a new planet to place the utopia of Blazing World, Cavendish actively uses the rational functions of the mind, showing that reason and rational matter are above all else in natural philosophy. Although Cavendish's scientific theory in some ways promotes the participation of women in natural philosophy, it becomes complicated as she simultaneously reinforces her social biases and urges a traditional class system with a monarchical government. Cavendish actively separates the gender constraints in philosophical inquiry from the social limitations placed on the lower classes to promote herself and other aristocratic women in the pursuit of natural philosophy, urging that the rational realm, where all sexes are equal, should govern scientific investigation.

As a result of changes in the society, such as the increasing mobility, increasing spatial demandindgness of inhabitants and the onset of digital technologies, the architects and urbanists have been searching for new ways of urban housing developments. One of these ways is densification, i.e. an intensive use of the urban space. An intensive urban structure uses up the potential of a place to its maximum, solves several issues simultaneously and is a functional hybrid, the home of potential suburbanizers and a place of social contacts. It comes from the efforts to solve the particular issue of an over-populated, collapsing city. The aim of the thesis is to show contemporary approaches to the issue of intensive urban structures and to map out both the built and unbuilt projects. The thesis creates a system of their categorization and taxonomy. There is always a mixture of functions in play from the functional perspective. One can distinguish five categories according to the spacial conception. These categories are as follows: multiplicity, porousness, hybridity, connectivity and verticality. The public and semi-public spaces thus move to the higher levels of the city, into the city level, urban balcony or the hybrid landscape. The built projects usually tend to be impulses, in relation to the original city, to develop and revitalize the devastated city areas, brownfields, even urban sprawls. Based on the findings of this thesis, diploma and pre-diploma project assignments have been created at the architecture department at FAST VUT in Brno and the approaches to the issue have been tested in the pedagogical process. The survey in the second part of the thesis looks for the answer to the question of whether the potential inhabitants of an intensive urban structure exist, and who these people might be.

The beauty industry has been booming in the last few years, generating immense profits as it now translates into an Internet global beauty culture in its own right that finally made room for women of color. As research barely mentions African women and their diasporas, this study aims to critically analyze the dynamic of this North American-dominated Internet beauty culture celebrating non-white women, looking at how it impacts African women and their diasporas and participates in affirming a global woman of color through commodity capitalism.  Based on discourse analysis of multiple actors in the industry using popular culture sources, I then conducted a critical feminist autoethnography of my beauty journey, put in perspective with the results of decolonial interviews with African and African diaspora women recruited online. I asked about their relationship with the beauty industry and their opinions on some arguments I made. Self and collective analysis demonstrated the emergence of an African diasporic hybrid beauty culture, empowering women to feel like actors of change.

I denna uppsats undersöker vi hur kapitalistisk realism, så som formulerat av Mark Fisher, uttrycks i två samtida romaner: The Road (2006) av Cormac McCarthy och Another Now (2021) av Gianis Varoufakis. Vi undersöker även romanernas relation till hopp och använder Ernst Blochs idéer i ämnet. I McCarthys skildring av människan, samhället och tiden, bekräftas kapitalistisk realism genom glorifiering av bland annat irrationalitet, brutal individualism och det "eviga nuet". Hoppet i romanen är av religiös natur. I Another Now, å andra sidan, ifrågasätts kapitalistisk realism, och alternativa synsätt och sociala arrangemang föreslås. Hoppet sammanfaller här med Blochs idé om det begripliga hoppet. / In this paper we examine how capitalist realism, as formulated by Mark Fisher, is expressed in two contemporary novels: The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy and Another Now (2021) by Yanis Varoufakis. We also examine how the novels relate to hope, and use Ernst Blochs ideas on the subject. In McCarthy's depiction of humanity, society, and time, capitalist realism is validated through, among other things, the glorification of irrationality, brutal individualism, and the "eternal present". Hope in the novel is of a religious character. In Another Now, however, the same ideology is questioned, and alternative views as well as concrete post-capitalist social arrangements are proposed. Here, hope aligns with Bloch's idea of comprehended hope.

Die Dissertation untersucht einen Paradigmenwechsel in der Rezeption der historischen Avantgarde in (medien-)künstlerischen Projekten der 1980er und 1990er Jahre in Ex-Jugoslawien und Russland. Dieser Paradigmenwechsel liegt im veränderten Verhältnis zum Begriff der (politischen wie künstlerischen) Utopie begründet. In den 1980er Jahren zeichnet sich die Rezeption sowohl im sogenannten sowjetischen Postutopismus (Il’ja Kabakov, Ėrik Bulatov, Oleg Vasil’ev, Komar & Melamid, Kollektive Aktionen) als auch in der jugoslawischen Retroavantgarde (NSK, Mladen Stilinović, Malevič aus Belgrad etc.) durch ein ‚diskursarchäologisches’ Interesse an potentiell totalitären Elementen der Avantgarde aus. Seit Beginn der 1990er Jahre lässt sich eine signifikant veränderte Rezeption der historischen künstlerischen Avantgarde in Projekten junger KünstlerInnen aus dem östlichen Europa festellen (Neoutopismus, Retroutopismus). Die Utopien der Avantgarde werden im sogenannten Retroutopismus (Marko Peljhan, Vadim Fishkin) nicht mehr primär mit totalitären Tendenzen gleichgesetzt, sondern sie werden jetzt vor allem auf ihre medientechnologischen Projektionen und Entwürfe durchgesehen. Diese wurden nicht nur von einzelnen Avantgarde-Künstlern und –Theoretikern (Velimir Chlebnikov, Bertolt Brecht), sondern auch von Wissenschaftlern und Ingenieuren (Nikola Tesla, Herman Potočnik Noordung) am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts entwickelt. In den 1990er Jahren wird in künstlerischen Projekten somit ein verstärktes medienarchäologisches Interesse für frühe utopische Technologiephantasien der Avantgarde wahrnehmbar, das symptomatisch für ein signifikant verändertes Verhältnis zur Utopie bzw. zum Utopischen ist: Das Utopische löst sich von seinem eindeutig negativen, da politisch-totalitären Beigeschmack (verstanden als ‚Utopismus’) und wird wieder verstärkt positiv politisch konnotiert, d.h. als emanzipatives oder auch visionär-gespinsthaftes Potenzial verstanden (‚Utopizität’). / The dissertation researches a paradigmatic shift in the way artists reflect the historical avant-garde in visual and media art projects of the 1980s and 1990s in (ex-)Yugoslavia and Russia. The reasons for this paradigm shift can be found in the changing relationship to the notion of utopia, both in its political and its artistic connotation. In the 1980s, the reception both in so-called Soviet postutopianism (Il’ja Kabakov, Ėrik Bulatov, Oleg Vasil’ev, Komar & Melamid, Kollektive Aktionen) and in the Yugoslav retro-avant-garde (NSK, Mladen Stilinović, Malevič from Belgrads etc.) is characterized by a ‘discourse archeological’ interest in the potentially totalitarian elements of the avant-garde. Yet this point of view changes fundamentally during the 1990s in a younger generation of artists (neoutopianism and retroutopianism). Retroutopianism (Marko Peljhan, Vadim Fishkin) no longer primarily equates the utopianism of the avant-garde with totalitarian tendencies, but is reexamined with regard to its media-technological projections and designs, which were not only developed by individual avant-garde artists and theoreticians (Velimir Khlebnikov, Bertolt Brecht) but also by scientists and engineers during the early 20th century (Nikola Tesla, Herman Potočnik Noordung). Artistic projects of the time reveal an increasing ‘media-archeological’ fascination for the avant-garde's early utopian fantasies of technology. This fascination, in turn, is symptomatic for a significant change in the relationship to utopia and utopian thinking on the whole: utopian thinking per se separates from its unambiguously negative, political-totalitarian aftertaste (understood as 'utopianism') and takes on a new positive political connotation. It is now understood as an emancipatory or visionary-spectral potentiality ('utopicity').

Von Haus aus sind Sibyllinische Orakel eine griechisch-römische Literaturgattung, eine Sammlung von Orakelsprüchen in griechischen Hexametern, die nicht erhalten ist. Die uns überlieferten Sibyllinischen Orakel sind jüdischen, christlichen und teilweise paganen Ursprungs. Die insgesamt 14 Bücher sind in den Jahren 150 vor bis 300 nach Christus entstanden. Bis zu ihrer Wiederentdeckung im Vatikan waren die Sibyllinischen Orakel nur durch Zitate der Kirchenväter bekannt. Buch 3 ist laut Mehrheit der Forscher das älteste der Sammlung und entstand im zweiten vorchristlichen Jahrhundert in Ägypten. Die Arbeit stellt diesen Konsens in Frage. Sie konzentriert sich dabei auf die Vorstellung der Beherrschung des Raumes im dritten Sibyllinischen Orakel. Dabei geht es einerseits um die rein geographische Vorstellung der Welt, die der Sibylle zugrunde liegt und andererseits um die politisch-theologische Vorstellung der Abfolge von Weltreichen, die diese Welt nacheinander beherrschen und schlussendlich von der Herrschaft Gottes abgelöst werden. Das Thema Gottesherrschaft nimmt in den jüdischen Pseudepigraphen eine relativ marginale Rolle ein. Dies könnte sicherlich damit zusammenhängen, dass die Diasporaschriften nicht unmittelbar unter dem Einfluss der sogenannten Antiochenischen Verfolgung und den Makkabäeraufständen standen, anders als z.B. das Danielbuch. In den Texten aus der Diaspora findet sich das Thema Gottesherrschaft sogar nur im dritten Sibyllinischen Orakel und in der Weisheit Salomos. Besonderes Gewicht hat die Gottesherrschaft schließlich in den Schriften des Neuen Testament. Ich hoffe mit meiner Arbeit einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Genese der Vorstellung der Gottesherrschaft im Neuen Testament zu leisten. Der endzeitliche Zustand, den die Sibylle für die Umsetzung der göttlichen Herrschaft auf Erden prophezeit, kann mit dem Begriff Utopie beschrieben werden. / Originally, the Sibylline Oracles were a Graeco-Roman literary genre, namely a collection of oracles composed in Greek hexamters which have not come down to us. The Sibylline Books that we have today are of Jewish and Christian origin and stem from a time when the genre was adapted first by Jews and then Christians. The altogether 14 books have developed between 150 BCE and 300 CE and for the longest time were only known through quotations in the church fathers such as Eusebius and Lactantius. According to the majority of scholars, Book III is the oldest of the Sibylline corpus and developed in the 2nd century BCE in Egypt. This thesis reconsiders the established consensus using old and new evidence alike. It focuses on the image of dominion of space in the Third Sibyl. On the one hand, space is looked at as the geographical image of the world as the Sibyl has access to, on the other, space is looked at as the political-theological image of succession of empires that rule the world consecutively until eventually they are superseded by the dominion of God. The dominion of God only play a minor role in Jewish pseudepigraphy. This could be related to the fact that the writings of the Diaspora were not immediately affected by the so-called Antiochene persecution and the Maccabean revolt unlike, for instance, the Book of Daniel. In the writings of the Diaspora the topic only occurs in the Third Sibyl and in the Wisdom of Solomon. It becomes particularly important in the New Testament. With this thesis I hope to provide an important contribution to the genesis of the image of the dominion of God in the New Testament. The eschatological age that the Sibyl prophecies for the establishment of the divine dominion on earth can be described using the term utopia.

Dénonciation passionnée d'un capitalisme naissant, L'Utopie est aussi une critique radicale du communisme d'État, qui, si religieux qu'il se veuille, n'y subsiste que par la répression, au-dedans, et le cynisme, au dehors. L'Utopie regorge de tout ce que « socialisme » put jamais connoter de militantisme valable : d'un côté, de sages réformes; de l'autre, pour en grandir l'urgence, la menace brandie de l'inquiétante alternative: le communisme, remède pire que le mal. Dénonciation passionnée d'un capitalisme adulte, le socialisme de Tillich est également une critique radicale d'un socialisme a-religieux. Théologien de la culture, qui discerne le fonds religieux latent sous des formes anti-religieuses, Tillich trouve chez Marx des valeurs qu'il intègre à son socialisme religieux : à la lutte anti-capitaliste menée par le prolétaire, ce “combattant du royaume de Dieu”, il donne un but religieux, auquel s'adapteront les moyens. Théologien avant tout, Tillich motive en profondeur la phronêsis qu'un More versé en politique exerce en plénitude.